- Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Conference - August 2019
Jeffrey Epstein Was a Sex Offender. The Powerful Welcomed Him Anyway.
Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a sex crime involving a teenage girl. Some elites shunned him, but others embraced him.
By Jodi Kantor, Mike McIntire and Vanessa Friedman
July 13, 2019
A strange thing happened when Jeffrey Epstein came back to New York City after being branded a sex offender: His reputation appeared to rise.
In 2010, the year after he got out of a Florida jail, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos dined at his Manhattan mansion with a British royal. The next year, Mr. Epstein was photographed at a “billionaire’s dinner” attended by tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. A page popped up on Harvard University’s website lauding his accomplishments, and superlative-filled news releases described his lofty ambitions as he dedicated $10 million to charitable causes.
Powerful female friends served as social guarantors: Peggy Siegal, a gatekeeper for A-list events, included him in movie screenings, and Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, a champion of women’s health, maintained a friendship that some felt gave him credibility. Mr. Epstein put up a website showing Stephen Hawking and other luminaries at a science gathering he had organized.
“If you looked up Jeffrey Epstein online in 2012, you would see what we all saw,” Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, said in an interview. He seemed “like an ex-con who had done well on Wall Street,” who was close to the Clintons and gave money to academic pursuits, Dr. Botstein said. That was why, he noted, Bard accepted an unsolicited $50,000 in 2011 for its high schools, followed later that year and in 2012 by another $75,000 in donations.
Over a decade ago, when Mr. Epstein was very publicly accused of sexually abusing girls as young as 14, he minimized the legal consequences with high-powered lawyers, monetary settlements that silenced complaints, and a plea deal that short-circuited an F.B.I. investigation and led to the resignation announcement on Friday of a Trump cabinet official who had overseen the case as a prosecutor. Socially, Mr. Epstein carried out a parallel effort, trying to preserve his reputation as a financier, philanthropist and thinker.
Some of the respect Mr. Epstein, 66, drew on was manufactured, the accomplishments recycled. The gathering with Dr. Hawking had taken place back in 2006. The positive online notices appeared to have been paid for by Mr. Epstein: A writer employed by his foundation churned out the news releases, and Drew Hendricks, the supposed author of a Forbes story calling Mr. Epstein “one of the largest backers of cutting edge science,” conceded in an interview that he was given $600 to post the pre-written article under his own name. (Forbes removed the piece after The New York Times published its article.)
Though some institutions and prominent people, including Donald J. Trump, said they shunned him, Mr. Epstein’s tactics largely worked. Over the past week, as the scope of his alleged offenses, involving dozens of victims in the early 2000s, became clearer after a new indictment in New York, the story of Mr. Epstein and his social circles shows how some people were willing to welcome back — or at least give a pass to — a handsome rich man who had been convicted of a crime involving a minor.
Mr. Epstein’s social strategy proceeded from his legal one. The lenient agreement he reached with prosecutors — his plea involved one girl and the crime was prostitution, which made it look like the teenager was in part to blame — gave others a reason to dismiss his wrongdoing, decide he had already paid his penalty or not question what had happened.
At the top of New York society, plenty of people have “weird chitchat attached to their name,” said Candace Bushnell, the “Sex and the City” writer. She said in an interview that she looked into rumors about Mr. Epstein for The New York Observer in 1994 but stopped reporting after she was thrown out of his townhouse and threatened.
For years to come, people brushed such stories aside. “You’d think, ‘It couldn’t possibly be true,’” she said.
A Renaissance Man
In March 2006, a year after allegations of sexual misconduct were first reported to the police in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Epstein underwrote the kind of elite event he prized.
Though Mr. Epstein never attended Harvard, it became a recurring theme in his self-styled image. He made donations and mingled with its faculty, including the law professor Alan Dershowitz.
It was a five-day gathering in the Caribbean of some of the world’s top scientists, including Dr. Hawking, to share ideas about gravity and cosmology, with scuba and catamaran excursions on the side. One evening, the participants had dinner on the beach at Mr. Epstein’s private island.
Some of the scientists noticed that Mr. Epstein “was always followed by a group of something like three or four young women,” as Alan Guth, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put it in an email to The Times, but they did not probe further.
Over a decade later, after Mr. Epstein was released from the Palm Beach County jail, he employed a similar strategy. He surrounded himself with prestige and counted on others to look past what he had done.
“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’ Mr. Epstein told The New York Post in 2011. “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”
Ms. Siegal recalled, “He said he’d served his time and assured me that he changed his ways.”
For someone purported to have vast resources at his disposal, Mr. Epstein’s early endeavors to improve his image were oddly unpolished. In 2010 he created the first of at least a half-dozen websites, with names like JeffreyEpsteinScience.com and JeffreyEpsteinEducation.com, dedicated to extolling his philanthropy and fashioning himself a patron of technology and medicine.
The websites looked amateurish, the photos of him meeting with top scientists dated to years before his time in jail, and the name of the Harvard professor who led a research center Mr. Epstein had funded, Martin A. Nowak, was often misspelled.
At the same time, Mr. Epstein launched a public-relations campaign composed of a blizzard of news releases, along with canned write-ups designed to resemble news stories. For the most part, the announcements, which circulated from 2012 to 2014, were recycled accounts of donations he had made in the early 2000s and did not reflect new charitable giving. The earliest releases listed Mr. Epstein’s personal contact information, though later ones had the name of a media consultant. Some of the ersatz news stories found their way onto sites like Forbes and The Huffington Post.
Of all the names Mr. Epstein dropped, perhaps the most frequent was Harvard’s.
Though Mr. Epstein never attended Harvard or even got a college degree, the university has been a recurring theme in his self-styled image as a Renaissance man of finance and science. He found Harvard’s doors open to him once he opened his wallet, with donations starting in the early 1990s that eventually totaled at least $7.5 million.
He took to wearing Harvard sweatshirts, gravitated to mingling with celebrity scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Pinker, and developed friendships with the former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers and the law professor Alan Dershowitz, who later helped defend him. (In civil suits, Mr. Dershowitz has been accused of having sex with two of Mr. Epstein’s accusers; he has denied the allegations and accused their lawyers of malfeasance.) Mr. Epstein, a former math teacher, even popped up for lunchtime discussions among scientists at a Harvard cafeteria, Dr. Pinker said in an interview, adding, “He weighted his own opinions as much as scholarly literature.”
By 2014, a page appeared on the website for Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, the initiative Mr. Epstein had financed 11 years earlier with a $6.5 million donation (and a pledge of $23.5 million more that never came), featuring a studio portrait, his résumé and links to his websites. “He is one of the largest supporters of individual scientists, including theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Marvin Minsky, Seth Lloyd and Nobel Laureates Gerard ’t Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek,” the Harvard bio said, in what appears to be an exaggerated claim.
A Harvard spokesman said he did not know who was responsible for the page, which has since been removed.
A registered sex offender known for his lavish lifestyle and high-profile connections to the rich and powerful, the financier Jeffrey Epstein is facing new charges that he exploited dozens of young girls for sex acts.
That same year, Mr. Epstein resurfaced at a prestigious science conference. Dr. Pinker, who sat at the same table as Mr. Epstein, said he was treated as an important donor to be wooed.
A Brand-New Start of It
Although he was often described as a billionaire, Mr. Epstein did not come close in his philanthropy to other superrich people. His charitable foundations rarely gave away more than $1 million a year during the 2000s, according to tax records, and much of it was money others had given him.
In 2015, a new foundation Mr. Epstein created, Gratitude America, received a $10 million infusion and started making donations. The source of the money is something of a mystery. Like his earlier giving, which was financed largely by $21 million in donations to his foundation from a close friend and business associate, the retail magnate Leslie H. Wexner, the 2015 money did not appear to have come from Mr. Epstein.
Tax records show the $10 million donation came from a limited liability company located at a 22-story building on Park Avenue in Manhattan that also houses the family foundation of Leon Black, a billionaire investor and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. He has known Mr. Epstein for years. In 1999, Mr. Black gave $166,000 to another of Mr. Epstein’s charities, and Mr. Epstein once served on the board of Mr. Black’s own foundation. The two men also appear in photos at a 2007 meeting with scientists at Harvard.
It could not be determined whether Mr. Black was responsible for the $10 million donation. His representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, founder of the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai, gave Mr. Epstein another form of currency.
The physician, who served for many years as an in-house doctor of NBC, is a breast cancer survivor who used her experience as inspiration for a holistic treatment approach. A former model and Miss Sweden, she is the wife of Glenn Dubin, a founder of Highbridge Capital Management who is No. 1168 on the Forbes billionaires list. The two are known for their philanthropy, and in 2006 they bought Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s former apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, a symbol of their standing in the city.
Dr. Andersson-Dubin also has a long history with Mr. Epstein, and has remained loyal to him since the 1980s.
At that time, she was putting herself through medical school. She became his girlfriend and, with his encouragement, put modeling aside to focus on her studies. They remained close after she married in 1994. After Mr. Epstein’s release from jail, she continued to socialize with him; those in her circle were aware of their continued friendship.
Despite longstanding news reports about Mr. Epstein’s behavior, Dr. Andersson-Dubin said through a spokeswoman that she was shocked by the recent news. “She’s a very loyal friend and didn’t abandon him after 2008, but the frequency of their contact was less,” the spokeswoman said. The new allegations “are completely counter to the person she is familiar with.”
Their relationship went a long way toward dispersing the cloud around him, according to some observers. If Mr. Epstein had Dr. Andersson-Dubin’s friendship, it suggested to others that perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Ms. Siegal, perhaps the city’s most prominent professional hostess, took a more active role, using her gate-keeping powers to usher Mr. Epstein, a friend, into screenings and events.
In an interview, she said that her relationship with Mr. Epstein was not a paid one: They had developed a rapport over the years, with him often quizzing her about films and other topics. “I was a kind of plugged-in girl around town who knew a lot of people,” she said. “And I think that’s what he wanted from me, a kind of social goings-on about New York.”
After he left jail, she had no trouble continuing the friendship. She knew other people who had served time and then resurrected their lives, she said. “The culture before #MeToo was — ‘You’ve done your time, now you’re forgiven.’”
At screenings, Mr. Epstein would shuffle in at the last minute, sit in the back, speak to no one and leave before the party, Ms. Siegal said. He had no ambitions for New York’s party circuit, she and others said, and preferred to entertain people in his own space.
But her invitations helped. In 2010, just after Mr. Epstein left jail, he attended a screening of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” Soon a flattering blind item appeared in The New York Post about how he was “greeted warmly by guests.”
“It was the first time he has been out in two years, but nobody blinked he was there,” an anonymous source told the newspaper.
A few months later, Ms. Siegal threw the dinner party at Mr. Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion for Prince Andrew, giving Ms. Couric, Mr. Stephanopoulos, Chelsea Handler and others a chance to speak to a member of the royal family a few months before the much-anticipated wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
“It was just one of those strange nights,” Ms. Handler said in an interview. Ms. Siegal had not emphasized who was hosting, several guests recalled. “The invitation was positioned as, ‘Do you want to have dinner with Prince Andrew?’” Ms. Siegal said. Mr. Epstein did not speak much. Dr. Andersson-Dubin was there, but others said they barely knew who Mr. Epstein was or what he had been convicted of.
Two of the other guests have also been accused of sexual misconduct, then or since: the television host Charlie Rose and Woody Allen, who attended along with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn. (“So how did the two of you meet?” Ms. Handler recalled asking the couple.) Soon after, outraged headlines appeared about Prince Andrew’s associating with Mr. Epstein, a sex offender.
In a recent email, Mr. Stephanopoulos said he regretted attending. “That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him,” he said, referring to Mr. Epstein. “I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.”
After the #MeToo era dawned in 2017, others were starting to feel less comfortable with Mr. Epstein. The Miami Herald published an investigation that spurred new interest in the case. Ms. Siegal began to distance herself. It was obvious that he was going to face renewed scrutiny, she said, but “he was in complete denial.”
Others echoed that description. Just three months ago, as federal prosecutors were closing in with new charges, Mr. Epstein had a conversation with R. Couri Hay, a publicist, about continuing to improve his reputation. Mr. Epstein asserted that what he was convicted of did not constitute pedophilia, said Mr. Hay, who declined to represent him.
The girls he had sex with were “tweens and teens,” Mr. Epstein told him.
Reporting was contributed by Jacob Bernstein, Dennis Overbye, Sarah Maslin Nir and Megan Twohey
More Details About Jeffrey Epstein’s Past Emerge
By Chas Danner and Matt Stieb July 15, 2019
How Epstein regained his influence after prison
Wondering why elite circles in entertainment and finance welcomed Epstein back after his 13 months in prison beginning in 2008, New York Times reporters Jodi Kanor, Mike McIntre, and Vanessa Friedman found that the financier invested in a pretty simple PR-rehab strategy. Tactics reportedly included paying a writer $600 to write a glowing item in Forbes calling Epstein “one of the largest backers of cutting edge science.” He also bought URLs to at least half-a-dozen sites, like JeffreyEpsteinScience.com and JeffreyEpsteinEducation.com, full of old pictures of him with academic heavyweights and misspellings; the sites feigned as if his prior giving to academic and science institutions was more current. The lenient plea deal in Florida helped as well, as it “gave others a reason to dismiss his wrongdoing, decide he had already paid his penalty or not question what had happened.”
Two other moments from the report are worth quoting — the first involving comedian Chelsea Handler at a dinner at Epstein’s house with Charlie Rose, Woody Allen, and Soon-Yi Previn, where she jokingly asked the couple “So, how did the two of you meet?”
The second involves an alleged interaction between Epstein and publicist R. Couri Hay about how he might continue to improve his reputation:
Mr. Epstein asserted that what he was convicted of did not constitute pedophilia, said Mr. Hay, who declined to represent him.
The girls he had sex with were “tweens and teens,” Mr. Epstein told him.
Former Dalton students say Epstein behaved inappropriately toward female students
The Times also reported on Epstein’s time at Manhattan’s prestigious Dalton school in the mid-1970s, when Attorney General William Barr’s father Donald wrangled him a job teaching math and physics, although he dropped out of college:
Eight former students who attended the prestigious school during Mr. Epstein’s short tenure there said that his conduct with teenage girls had left an impression that had lingered for decades. One former student recalled him showing up at a party where students were drinking, while most remembered his persistent attention on the girls in hallways and classrooms.
“I can remember thinking at the time, ‘This is wrong,’” said Scott Spizer, who graduated from Dalton in 1976.
Though none of the female students interviewed recalled any “unwanted touching,” Dalton graduates remember the 21-year-old teacher flirting with students as young as 14. “There was a real clarity of the inappropriateness of the behavior — that this isn’t how adult male teachers conduct themselves,” former student Millicent Young told the Times.
New Mexico’s attorney general is investigating Epstein — and his ranch
The New Mexico state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into Epstein and whether or not he sexually abused any of his victims at the $15.7 million ranch he owns in the state, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican. The spokesperson for Attorney General Hector Balderas announced on Thursday that his office “has been in contact with survivors and is investigating this horrific matter,” and that it will pass along any findings to the SDNY....
E. Jean Carroll: “Trump attacked me in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.”
By Sarah Jones June 21, 2019
The cover story New York published today details an encounter the writer E. Jean Carroll had over two decades ago with Donald J. Trump, in which the then–real-estate mogul allegedly assaulted her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in midtown Manhattan.
The episode is one of six incidents Carroll details in the article of attacks on her by men over the course of her life. Another episode involves the disgraced former CEO of CBS, Les Moonves. The cover story is an excerpt from her newest book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, which will be published on July 2 by St. Martin’s Press.
When Carroll meets Donald Trump in Bergdorf Goodman, the encounter starts as a friendly one. Trump recognizes her as “that advice lady”; Carroll recognizes him as “that real-estate tycoon.” Trump tells Carroll that he’s there to buy a gift for “a girl,” and though we don’t learn the identity of this mystery woman, Carroll places the ensuing incident in late 1995 or early 1996, during which time Trump was married to Marla Maples. When Trump asks Carroll to advise him on what to buy, she agrees, and the two eventually make their way to the lingerie section. Trump suggests a lace bodysuit and encourages Carroll to try it on; she, deflecting, jokingly suggests that he try it on instead. After they reach the dressing rooms, events turn violent. In Carroll’s account, Trump shoves her against a wall inside a dressing room, pulls down her tights, and, “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
Carroll is now at least the 16th woman to accuse Donald Trump of sexual misconduct and the 14th to accuse Moonves of similar offenses. The incidents, which date from the 1990s, are highly specific and related with dark humor. Moonves is compared by Carroll to an octopus, and Trump, she writes, “yammers about himself like he’s Alexander the Great ready to loot Babylon.” But she is clear, sometimes clinical, about the violence she experienced. Moonves frantically kisses and gropes her in a hotel elevator moments after she finished interviewing him for an article. The Trump story is even darker....http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/president-donald-trump-faces-new-rape-accusation.html
Here is a preview of Alison Miller's work, author of Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (for therapists), Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse (for survivors), and co-author with survivor Wendy Hoffman of From the Trenches: A Victim and Therapist Talk about Mind Control and Ritual Abuse.
If you are a survivor of abuse by a mind-controlling abuser group, you have parts who have been trained to obey abusers because they believe lies your abusers told you. The abusers deceived you in childhood, using drugs, acted-out scenarios, stage magic, stories and films to control your child parts and prevent you from speaking out about the abuse. Their power over you depends on your young parts believing the abusers’ lies. If you learn to recognize when your emotions and behavior are influenced by these deceptions, and to discover the ways in which you were deceived, you can increase your freedom from the abuser group. (Skype presentation)https://ritualabuse.us/smart/alison-miller
PowerPoints from the Survivorship Conference are now available at:
The 2019 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference is August 17 – 18, 2019 at the DoubleTree near Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT
Speakers include Alison Miller Ph.D, Neil Brick and movie maker Daniel Roemer. SMART will have special conference prices until July 25th and prices as low as $50. Complimentary copies of Wendy Hoffman's books will be available.
A Survivor’s View of Recovery from Ritual Abuse by Neil Brick
Recovery from ritual abuse can take many years. Recovery may include working through memories, building functionality and developing more effective ways of interacting and integrating emotions. Every individual has different experiences that lead them through the recovery path. Neil Brick will discuss his long journey healing from severe abuse. This will include ways he has learned more about himself, ways he has learned to develop healthier interactions with others and ways he has helped others along the recovery path.
Neil Brick is a survivor of ritual abuse and mind control. His work continues to educate the public about child abuse, trauma and ritual abuse crimes. His child abuse and ritual abuse newsletter S.M.A.R.T. https://ritualabuse.us has been published for over 24 years. http://neilbrick.com
Daniel Roemer – Film Maker
Bio: Daniel Roemer’s unique and powerful style of directing has lead him to receive such attention as USA Film’s Top 10 Emerging Director’s list at the age of 20, two-time Project Greenlight Best Director Finalist (Ben Affleck/Matt Damon), and student Academy Award State finalist by age 22. He has been characterized as “a filmmaker with his finger on the pulse of the world’s youth,” as his short films have been distributed theatrically in over 75 countries. Partnering with Inspirational Films in Europe, colleges have packed out auditoriums with over three thousand students, as well as standing room only theaters in major European cities.
He’s screened in festivals including Sundance, AFI Fest, LA Shorts Fest, and a special senator screening in Washington DC (for selected congressmen). Daniel was also among the few who finalized for the LA Shorts Fest “DNA Award,” the festival’s top honor of a million dollar feature deal with Universal Pictures (500 contestants).
Recently Daniel was a top 50 Director Finalist (of 10,000 entrants) for Fox’s reality show “On the Lot”, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, showcasing filmmakers “bound for stardom”. His shooting and editing have aired on Good Morning America, Dr. Phil and Arsenio Hall’s TV series “The World’s Funniest Moments”. His behind the scenes work includes Sony Picture’s exclusive (I Love Your Work) starring Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Lee, Vince Vaughn, Christina Ricci and Elvis Costello.
His nonprofit work includes interviews and promos with John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Meryl Streep, Olivia Newton-John, John Ritter, Pierce Brosnan and Selma Blair, as well as an extensive interview with Ben Stiller for The Huckleberry Fund (nonprofit for Homeless Children). Editing credits include 15-week TV series “Beyond the Felt,” showcasing world’s top poker players, A&E reality TV show “Dumpster Diving,” feature-length documentary on Breast Cancer, starring Christina Applegate, Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow (distrib. Lionsgate).
He’s filmed and edited for A&E E!, ET, Access Hollywood, TV News, and screened at national conventions for 20th Century Fox Producer, Ralph Winter (X-Men 1&2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Fantastic 4). Most recently Daniel directed a TV pilot for CW Network (Atlanta) and is in post production, as well as finishing his feature-length documentary “Red White and Blowhard” shot across the US 2012-2013. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1281008/
Part One: Daniel Roemer will share his own story using PowerPoint, visuals and clips from his docudrama “Gray”, which digs deep into uncovering my abuse history, actual news articles from the time of the abuse, and includes interviews with prominent locals and family members, and his personal search for what went on.
Part Two: Daniel Roemer will conduct a film-making 101 class (designed for self-taping and interviewing others) – to share the story, both technical and directorial how-to’s. Clinicians would also benefit in having these skills to share their methods of work.
Everyone has a unique story, whether you are a clinician, a survivor or both. Stories, since the beginning of time, united tribes and cultures and passed along their ideals by framing LIFE as a narrative. Stories helped the listener to feel less alone in the world, feel inspired, and helped them to become all the wiser on their own journey.
As survivors, our ‘through-lines’ can get messed up, become discombobulated; our brains try to put memories back together, our emotions can flood us— it is hard. TELLING OUR STORIES can not only help “put the beads back on the string,” but it can be incredibly cathartic for both the storyteller and (if interviewing a source) the interviewee. It can also educate viewers not aware of survivor struggles, empowering them with knowledge and heightening their sensitivities, along with raising awareness. Helping others can be the most healing elixir of all. It gives meaning to suffering. Through many forms of media, we now have the ability to share our stories in ways we never could before.
A survivor or clinician wielding FILMMAKING SKILLS has the ability to ignite a long-lasting, pervasive force of influence, exposing, and becoming a voice to be reckoned with in the survivor community; as we shall not be silenced. We are a YouTube generation, and there are specific ways to utilize simple tools to share stories even as novice media-makers.
